Vance addresses economic grievances and an unpopular Republican president
An NPR analysis by Danielle Kurtzleben presents Vance’s current speaking tour as an early preview of the political identity he could take into a 2028 presidential campaign. It comes before 2028 campaigns begin in earnest and while Vance is working for Republican candidates in the midterm race. The message blends his biography, a nostalgic account of small-town America and the culture-war themes associated with President Trump, but Kurtzleben finds a significant constraint in the president’s unpopularity.
Vance jokes about Talarico in Weatherford
At a Thursday speech in Weatherford, Texas, Vance directed a joke at Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico. He gave the speech the same afternoon that President Trump spoke in Rock Hill, South Carolina, as part of the president’s pre-midterm blitz of rallies. “Now James Talarico has also said that he really has to grapple with his masculinity in addition to his whiteness,” Vance said. “And you know, James, the good news is, there ain’t a whole lot to grapple with,” he finished to cheers from the crowd.
Kurtzleben described Vance’s delivery as less borscht-belt comedian and more practiced politician than Trump’s. The analysis said Vance’s speech contained MAGA themes, including insulting a candidate’s masculinity and promising a return of American greatness. That contrast offered a sense of what a Vance presidential pitch might look like once 2028 campaigns begin in earnest next year.
Vance discusses gas, diesel and beef prices
The central challenge for Vance, according to Kurtzleben’s analysis, is promoting Republican candidates while the Republican president he serves is unpopular. The analysis described that challenge as particularly acute where the president’s policies have directly caused economic woes.
The Iran War sent gas and diesel prices spiraling upward, but Vance generally did not bring the war up in his stump speeches. In Montana, he cast the gas-price increases caused by the war as an unfortunate, recurring result of geopolitics. “Remember in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine and gas prices skyrocketed? They skyrocketed, by the way, far higher than they are today,” he told a Montana crowd. “They skyrocketed in 1979. They skyrocketed in 2001. They skyrocketed in 2007. They skyrocket every time some tin pot dictator decides to throw a tantrum.”
Vance also acknowledged the high price of beef and cast it as a problem of consolidation among meatpackers. Kurtzleben said that framing allowed him to sidestep the fact that Trump’s own policies had angered beef producers. The analysis presented the contrast as a way for Vance to address economic grievances without directly assigning blame to the president whose administration he serves.
Anti-fraud appearances draw on Vance’s biography
Vance’s appearances this year as head of President Trump’s anti-fraud task force have been interspersed with his campaign speeches. The task force’s goal is to root out malfeasance in social safety net programs. Kurtzleben said the position provides both résumé material and an opportunity for Vance to tell his personal story.
In Cincinnati last week, Vance told a crowd, “I worked as a cashier at a grocery store for a couple of years, this was my very first job, Dhillon Foods, probably 20 miles from where we’re standing today.” He added, “I also had a lot of members of my family benefit from these food benefit programs provided by federal tax dollars.”
Across multiple speeches, Vance remembered childhood football teams sponsored by local small businesses. In Howell, Michigan, he said, “I distinctly remember looking in my old jerseys and seeing the names of the businesses that had sponsored those teams and realizing that most of the teams I played for, those businesses no longer existed.” He continued, “They were casualties of politicians in a faraway place who didn’t give a damn what happened to Michigan or Ohio, and it was us that paid the consequences.”
Vance was first propelled onto the political scene by a memoir about growing up poor and rural in southern Ohio. His biography gives him political tools President Trump does not have, including the ability to talk personally about military service and economic difficulties. Kurtzleben said crowds loved Trump not because of his biographical relatability but because of his bombast and unfiltered anger. The analysis framed the broader challenge for any would-be 2028 Republican candidate: how to follow Trump’s singular, decade-plus-long performance and what, if anything, could replace it among GOP voters.
Vance invokes race, unity and Trump’s message
Kurtzleben said Vance’s message leaned into the culture wars fought during the Trump years. Vance painted a rosy picture of the America of his youth. In North Carolina this week, he invoked the “sense of pride and unity and fellowship” Americans had after September 11, 2001, and promised a return of American greatness. Kurtzleben characterized the larger story as a Norman Rockwell vision of America corrupted by Washington elites, with Vance presenting his populist politics as a way to bring that vision back.
Vance also talked about racial harmony in his peewee football stories, placing it well before the advent of Black Lives Matter: “the children of working-class Black families and the children of working-class white families would play football together, would cheer with one another, would never worry about the color of their skin or who had more privilege,” he told the crowd in North Carolina.
Kurtzleben described this as a more traditional, more eloquent packaging of Trump’s anti-woke MAGA message. Vance was also experimenting with crassness, including the occasional swear word and telling the Texas crowd he was “sweating my balls off” at the podium. Across the appearances, Kurtzleben found Vance building a political identity from biography, nostalgia, cultural conflict and economic grievance, with the popularity of the president he serves as a central constraint.